Hotel Front Office Management, 3rd Edition

90 CHAPTER 3: EFFECTIVE INTERDEPARTMENTAL COMMUNICATIONStheir next reservation if I don’t find them a parkingspace. How am I supposed to achieve 100 percentoccupancy with such a little thing as parkingcausing such a big problem?Andy Roth (parking garage manager): Hold on there,Ana. Running a parking garage isn’t an easy job.We have a lot of new monthly business customerswho are helping us make plenty of money. Didyou forget that those new monthly business customerspaid for the property management systemyou just bought? You were pretty happy aboutthat new business six months ago.Margaret Chu: Look, folks, we have to focus on thecustomer right now; I think both of you have lostsight of who the customer is.Eric Jones (food and beverage manager): It seems tome we have too few customers. I would like to seesome of those new parking customers stop in toone of my restaurants to have lunch. We havebeen tracking our lunch guests with business carddrawings, and so far we have only had three ofthem in for lunch. Let’s get rid of those new parkingcustomers and stick to the regular hotel guests.Frank Goss (director of maintenance): I agree. Thosenew parking customers are littering all over thegarage. They dump their cigarette butts and fastfoodtrash all over the place.Andy Roth: I’ll tell you just like I told Ana, thosenew parking customers bought you that fancy machineto change lightbulbs in your department.Where were all of you people when I asked MargaretChu if we could start to market the sales ofnew parking garage permits? This hotel should becalled Hotel Second Guess!Eric Jones: I think we are getting carried away withthis concern; the real problem we have here is thelack of cooperation with security. Ana, didn’t youhave two guest rooms broken into this month? It’stoo bad the director of security isn’t here to tell usmore about it. We never seem to get any followupreports on what’s going on or what we can doto prevent it from happening again.Margaret Chu: Mike, that is a good point you bringup, but we have to resolve Ana’s problem first.What do all of you suggest we do about the parkingproblem? Should we abandon a very profitableprofit center or keep the hotel guests happy?Andy Roth: Ms. Chu, if I may be so bold as to sayso, the solution we need is neither of those twooptions but a third one. Let’s lease some offpremisesparking from the Reston Hotel acrossthe street for our hotel guests during the businessweek. My friend Margo runs that garage, and shesays it is only about 75 percent full most weekdays.Margaret Chu: Well, Andy, I will have to check thisout with the general manager of the Reston. Heand I have a meeting with the City Visitors Associationtomorrow.Frank Goss: Ms. Chu, before we get to that securityproblem, let’s discuss my need to cover the secondshift over the weekend. That is an impossible request,because I am so understaffed. Do any ofyou have any extra employees who are handy infixing things and would like to earn a few extrabucks?Margaret Chu: Frank, it’s not that easy. We are on atight budget, and there are no extra dollars to payovertime. Let’s think about it and put a hold onscheduling a person for the second shift until wecan resolve the issue.Frank Goss: Sounds good to me.Margaret Chu: OK, Frank, we can meet right afterthis meeting and talk about it.Many of you do have challenges running yourdepartments, and most of the time, you do greatjobs. However, from what I am hearing today, weneed to start anticipating problems before theyTLFeBOOK